The Master

In "The Sound of Drums" and "The End of Time", a flashback shows the Master at the age of eight, when as part of a Time Lord initiation ceremony he is taken before a gap in the fabric of space and time known as the Untempered Schism, from which one can see into the entire Vortex. The Doctor states that looking into the time vortex causes some Time Lords to go mad, implying that event to have been the cause of the Master's actions and the four-beat sound of drums, which the Master calls the "drums of war". The drumming is later revealed to be a signal placed in his mind by the Time Lords during the Time War.

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A would-be universal conqueror, the Master wants to control the universe (in The Deadly Assassin his ambitions were described as becoming "the master of all matter", and in "The Sound of Drums" he acknowledges that he chose the name "the Master"), with a secondary objective of eliminating and/or hurting the Doctor. The original (and most common before 1996) look of the character was similar to that of the classic Svengali character; a black Nehru outfit with a beard and moustache.

In his three seasons beginning with Terror of the Autons, the Master appeared in eight out of the fifteen serials. In his first season the Master is involved in every adventure of the Doctor's, always getting away at the last minute before he is captured in The Dæmons, only to escape imprisonment in The Sea Devils. He would often use disguises and brainwashing to operate in normal society, while setting up his plans; he also tried to use other alien races and powers as his means to conquest, such as the Autons and the Daemons. Delgado's portrayal of the Master was as a suave, charming and somewhat sociopathic individual, able to be polite and murderous at almost the same time.

Delgado's last on-screen appearance as the Master was in Frontier in Space, where he is working alongside the Daleks and the Ogrons to provoke a war between the Human and Draconian Empires. His final scene ended with him shooting the Doctor and then disappearing.

There is also Toys and Games and many videos to and now he has a Daughter called Nyssa shown in The Keeper of Traken and his 1st tardis as a stone Age where only its eyes lit up and later in The five doctor's he is givin a recor device to return to the heart of the Captial he soon sees his other self on the ground

In his next appearance, in The Deadly Assassin, the Master appears as an emaciated, decaying husk, at the end of his thirteenth and final life. Given the severity of his situation, this Master is much darker than Delgado's version. Here, the evil Time Lord almost succeeds in his plan to restore himself to full life with the symbols of the office of President of the Council of Time Lords, the artifacts of Rassilon. The Doctor stops him because the process would have caused the destruction of Gallifrey. After this story, the Master again departs the series, returning in 1981. In The Keeper of Traken, the Master succeeds in renewing himself by taking over the body of the Trakenite scientist named Tremas (an anagram of "Master"), overwriting Tremas's mind in the process. The Master then appeared on and off for the rest of the series, still seeking to extend his life – preferably with a new set of regenerations. Subsequently in The Five Doctors, the Time Lords offer the Master a new regeneration cycle in exchange for his help.

In many of his appearances opposite the Fifth Doctor, the Master shows his penchant for disguise once again. For example, in Time-Flight he operates under concealment for no clear plot reason. The character's association with playful pseudonyms also continued both within the series and in its publicity: when the production team wished to hide the Master's involvement in a story, they credited the character under an anagrammatic alias such as "Neil Toynay" (Tony Ainley)

Ainley's final appearance in the role, in Survival, was more restrained. He was also given a more downbeat costume, reminiscent of the suits and ties worn by Delgado's Master. In this final story, he had been trapped on the planet of the Cheetah People and been affected by its influence, which drove its victims to savagery. Escaping the doomed planet, he attempted to kill the Doctor, a plan which left him trapped back on the planet as it was destroyed.

The Master appeared in the 1996 Doctor Who television movie that starred Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor. In the prologue, the Master was executed by the Daleks as a punishment for his "evil crimes". It has been suggested that Tipple may have been portraying the same incarnation of the Master as Ainley did. Most novelisations and comics published around the same time as the release of the movie are written from the perspective that it is Ainley's Master, but the movie leaves the question open.

The Master survives his execution by taking on the form of a small, snake-like entity. This entity escapes and slithers inside the Doctor's TARDIS console, forcing the vessel to crash land in San Francisco.

The novelisation of the television movie by Gary Russell posits that the modifications and alterations that the Master has made to his body over the years in attempts to extend his lifespan had allowed this continued existence, and the implication is that the "morphant" creature is actually another lifeform that the Master's consciousness possesses. This interpretation is made explicit in the first of the Eighth Doctor Adventures novels, The Eight Doctors by Terrance Dicks, and also used in the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip story The Fallen, which states that the morphant was a shape-shifting animal native to Skaro.

The morphant form is unsustainable and requires a human host, and it possesses the body of Bruce, a paramedic. Bruce's body is also unsustainable and begins to slowly degenerate, although he has the added ability to spit an acid-like bile as a weapon. The Master attempts to access the Eye of Harmony to steal the Doctor's remaining regenerations, but instead is sucked into it.

When Doctor Who was revived in 2005, it was initially claimed in the episode "Dalek" that all the Time Lords except the Doctor were killed in a Time War with the Daleks. The Doctor stated that if other Time Lords had survived, he would have been able to sense them.

The Master did however return as the main antagonist of the third series.

The Master's return is foreshadowed in "Gridlock", when the Face of Boe gives the Tenth Doctor a message before dying: "You are not alone".

In "The Sound of Drums", it is revealed that the Time Lords resurrected the Master to serve as the ultimate front line soldier in the Time War. After the Dalek Emperor took control of "The Cruciform", he fled the war in fear, ignorant of its outcome. He disguised himself as a human through the same process the Doctor himself used in "Human Nature"—a Chameleon Arch that stores his Time Lord nature and memories in a fob watch and allows him to become biologically human—and hid at the end of the universe aging into the benevolent scientist, Professor Yana. The professor was still plagued by the constant drumming as he attempts to send the last remaining humans to Utopia.

The Doctor meets Yana in "Utopia", and Time Lord-related words of the Doctor and his companions Martha Jones and Jack Harkness cause Yana to recall his Time Lord essence. This, along with the increased drumming and Martha's curiosity about the fob watch, causes Yana to open the watch and become the Master again, in a scene that makes clear that YANA is an acronym for the Face of Boe's last words, "You are not alone".

Near the end of "Utopia", the Master is mortally wounded when his companion Chantho shoots him after he fatally injured her, regenerating into a new younger incarnation. The Master steals the Doctor's TARDIS and escapes, but the Doctor sabotages the TARDIS using his sonic screwdriver so that the Master is only able to travel between present-day Earth and the year 100 Trillion.

Following his escape from the end of the universe, he arrives in the United Kingdom 18 months before the 2008 election, prior to the fall of Harriet Jones. The Master assumes the identity Harold Saxon, becoming a high-ranking minister at the Ministry of Defence. He apparently holds this post during the 2006 Christmas episode, "The Runaway Bride", as the Army are said to be firing upon the Racnoss ship on Mr. Saxon's orders. During this period, he finances Professor Richard Lazarus' research and sets up the Archangel communications network, which allows him to influence humanity using a telepathic field, enabling him to rise to the office of Prime Minister.

After becoming Prime Minister, the Master uses the TARDIS to recruit the Toclafane as allies, having them kill one tenth of the world population, and rules the Earth for a year, while he turns whole nations into work-camps and bases for a fleet of war rockets. Just as he is ready to wage war on the rest of the universe and forge an empire, the Doctor is restored to strength by the efforts of Martha Jones, using the Archangel network. The Doctor intends to keep the Master with him on the TARDIS; this plan is thwarted when the Master is shot by his wife Lucy Saxon. The Master then dies after refusing to regenerate, unwilling to be the Doctor's prisoner. Since his death emotionally hurts the Doctor, the Master views this as a victory.

The Doctor cremates the Master's body on a pyre. His ring remains, which is picked up by a woman with long, bright red fingernails.

In The End of Time, the Governor and other members of the Master's coven conduct the resurrection ritual at Broadfell prison, where Lucy Saxon was incarcerated. Lucy sabotages the ritual and the Master is returned to life with a failing body and a ravenous hunger for any sort of food, including human beings. He is able to manipulate bolts of electricity, move with phenomenal agility and jump great distances by manipulating his life force. Resorting to wandering the fringe of London and feeding on homeless people, he is eventually captured by billionaire Joshua Naismith in order to use his knowledge to repair an alien 'Immortality Gate' to make Naismith's daughter immortal. The Master sabotages the device, using its original purpose as a planet-wide medical tool to overwrite the DNA of every human on Earth with his own.

The Master realises that the drum beat in his head is a signal. Using his duplicates, he triangulates the signal to the Time Lord President , who had sent the signal in order to be released from the time-locked Time War. Using the time vortex, the Time Lords send a unique Gallifreyan diamond to earth to help the Master create a link through which Gallifrey, the Time Lords, and all in the Time War could escape. The Master intended to overwrite his DNA onto the Time Lord race, only to learn he had been used as a pawn in the Time Lords' own plan to destroy the universe and evolve to a higher plane of existence. The Doctor destroys the link and the Master attacks the President in an act of revenge for a lifetime of manipulation, disappearing along with the other Time Lords in the process.